Web 2.0 sociable technologies and social software are presented as
enablers in health and health care, for organizations, clinicians, patients
and laypersons. They include social networking services, collaborative
filtering, social bookmarking, folksonomies, social search engines, file
sharing and tagging, mashups, instant messaging, and online
multi-player games. The more popular Web 2.0 applications in education,
namely wikis, blogs and podcasts, are but the tip of the social software
iceberg. Web 2.0 technologies represent a quite revolutionary way of
managing and repurposing/remixing online information and knowledge
repositories, including clinical and research information, in comparison
with the traditional Web 1.0 model. The paper also offers a glimpse of
future software, touching on Web 3.0 (the Semantic Web) and how it
could be combined with Web 2.0 to produce the ultimate architecture
of participation. Although the tools presented in this review look very
promising and potentially fit for purpose in many health care
applications and scenarios, careful thinking, testing and evaluation
research are still needed in order to establish ‘best practice models’
for leveraging these emerging technologies to boost our teaching and
learning productivity, foster stronger ‘communities of practice’, and
support continuing medical education/professional development
(CME/CPD) and patient education.